Making a Chaveta ( Cigar Roller's ) Knife?

There are several ways to go here.
One is use a commercial ulu blade from one of the knife kit suppliers. Some chaveta are very similar.
Two is to make one from a high carbon steel. W2 or 1095 would be my choice. 1084 would also work. What you want is THIN. A piece in .065 to .100 thickness by 3" steel should work well.

I don't know if you can heat treat it yourself, because you haven't said what your HT setup is. If it is a torch or TBF, then you would be best to send it out. Another good reason is that warp is a big issue with longer and thinner blades.

You can put a simple wooden spine strip on it to make the grip better.
 
bladsmth said:
There are several ways to go here.
One is use a commercial ulu blade from one of the knife kit suppliers. Some chaveta are very similar.
Two is to make one from a high carbon steel. W2 or 1095 would be my choice. 1084 would also work. What you want is THIN. A piece in .065 to .100 thickness by 3" steel should work well.

I don't know if you can heat treat it yourself, because you haven't said what your HT setup is. If it is a torch or TBF, then you would be best to send it out. Another good reason is that warp is a big issue with longer and thinner blades.

You can put a simple wooden spine strip on it to make the grip better.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info and suggestions.
 
I would choose a thin piece of M4 because of its ability to support a steep, thin edge. However, M4 will not be a good choice if you are limited to basic hand tools.

When heat treating steel, there are two things I think you should consider:
1) it will be very pricy to send it out to heat treat if you aren't doing multiple knives

2) if you don't have a commercial type heat treat oven, "exotic" steels will be impossible to heat treat and you will probably want to go with 1095 or something similar that can be heat treated at home.
 
I thought this over a bit last night, and I think a good choice would also be .065" thick CPM-S35VN. It can be made pretty hard, keeps an edge well, and is stainless. The HT will have to be sent out, but is pretty basic for any HTer. The cost should only be $10-15 plus shipping.
 
Thanks for the replies. Do you know where I can buy steel in this thickness? The dimensions for the chavetas I've seen on YouTube appear to be 6" to 7" wide by 4" in height.
 
I'm not sure the ones commonly used are even heat treated at all. I made one since I grew tobacco in the back yard this year and home to roll a few. I used 1084 and did heat treat it. I didn't put a handle, I just rounded the spine. At the end of the day though I prefer using my gyuto. I've got some rsi / arthritis and its just more comfortable to hold for long periods of time. I also used it to mince some pipe tobacco.


Mine is only 2 inches in height as that was the widest steel I had. If I wanted it taller I would likely use a handle to make up the height. Taller probably would be more comfortable, but my touchy hands just don't like the grip style so I gave up on it.
 
I guess I don't understand the suggestion of super steels for something that is only going to be expected to cut dried leaves. I would think that any steel that could make a good blade would be just fine.
 
Think they got a bit carried away ;) If you just want one to use, this is one of those times I would cheap out and probably use a trash bin circular saw blade. It probably won't get really hard unless you find a blade without tips made of a different kind of steel, but if its something you aren't going to use a lot... You could make that in a couple hours and heat treat it with a torch... then if you find yourself wanting more, make a better one.
 
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oic0 said:
Think they got a bit carried away ;) If you just want one to use, this is one of those times I would cheap out and probably use a trash bin circular saw blade. It probably won't get really hard unless you find a blade without tips made of a different kind of steel, but if its something you aren't going to use a lot... You could make that in a couple hours and heat treat it with a torch... then if you find yourself wanting more, make a better one.
Click to expand...

Wellllll...... I don't know about getting carried away. Personally, I think Stacy's post about buying the blank was as good as it gets. About the price of a saw blade, no tempering, no cutting, no grinding... perfect. And look at the prices on the link. It isn't possible to beat that for efficiency. Put a fancy handle on one of those blanks and you are ready to use it.

I don't hang around in this part of the forum, but have read many of Mr. Apelt's posts and from a practicality standpoint he always seems to be on point.

From my perspective, I smoke a lot of cigars. I go to events a few times a year where we have rollers on site from Nicaragua, and I have watch them roll for years. In fact, living in San Antonio it is a common site at a cigar smoking get together to see rollers as the only cigar factory in the USA is here and they have about 30 full time rollers. Almost all moonlight as rollers for events.

That being said, about half of them seem to favor the "U" shaped Ulu shown in Stacy's post, with the handles cut down to make it as short as possible. But still, I would guess almost half just use a sharpened piece of steel about 1/16" thick. It is rounded like the Ulu on the cutting surface, tapers slightly towards the back side, and that is all there is to it. It is literally a piece of carbon steel metal with a sharpened edge. They don't fuss over the edges by polishing, taking the edge to a perfect angle, stropping, or any other such stuff. These are tools, and that's it. They have a stone to get the edge, and ever after I think they just use a piece of fine sandpaper for edge tune up. The leaves they use are NOT dry, the are moist and soft (so they can roll them tightly) and cut easily.

Using a razor sharp Ulu to cut tobacco leaves would be a snap.

Robert
 
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